Remembering Crown Cafe - Forgetting Bangalore

There is a decrepit building at the corner of where Brigade Road meets, or becomes, Hosur Road. Its dilapidated green façade stands crumbling amidst the constant fumes of emboutillage that this city piles in front of its large green wooden doors. The doors are closed. Perhaps, they have been opened a few times by legal representatives and court officials, I would imagine, as matter of due process, no importance being paid to its legacy, no connection being made with its tragic significance, no heed being paid to its history. It is an old building. Perhaps at the cusp of being declared a building of historical significance. Perhaps, it is already a 100 years old. It has been this way for many years. Until recently, I walked by this building enroute to work every day and not once did it occur to me that I was trudging along a much changed road, stamping out the remnants of an almost forgotten memory. Today, though, was different. I was parked at Show-Off and rummaging through the backseat of my car searching for my gym gear when I happened to stare a little longer that I would at the building across the street. It was barely a moment, but enough to send a tsunami of visuals and memories rushing through my head, almost leaving me gasping and spent. I had spent so many afternoons here with friends, and sometimes by myself, eating biryani, kheema and kebab. It wasn’t just the memory of a meal that affected me so, believe me. It was the fact that this building represented our apathy towards everything that has a soul, a history, character if you will, anything Bangalorean. This building is Bangalore. This building was Bangalore.
 

This building was Crown Café.

 

Until the day it shut, Crown Café opened through the week at about 12:30 in the afternoon and shut diligently by 3:30 PM. Its large green doors opened again in the evenings serving some snacks like mutton samosas and puffs, but it was the afternoon that people in the Richmond Town – Brigade Road area thronged it. It was a simple place that reminded me most of the Irani Cafes of Mumbai; housing a few tables, somewhat uncomfortable seating, and aged waiters who would lean in to hear you yell orders into their weak ears. Inside, was a small office for the Imtiaz Ahmed Cricket Academy, which is now one of the country’s most sought after coaching academies. I was never really sure if the Ahmed family owned Crown Café, but I do know that they also own the Crown Cricketer Cricket Store on Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road, so I won’t be surprised if they did. On the days that I would head over to Crown Café, I’d park my bike right out the front and settle in for a quiet afternoon of biryani and kebabs. It would be reasonably full, but that didn’t mean you didn’t have space to yourself. The traffic outside would be minimal and your meal would probably be interrupted by the occasional clinking from within the restaurant or the fading shriek from a speeding, ported auto on Brigade Road.  Most afternoons, you wouldn’t need to turn on the lighting in the place owing to the sunlight that streamed through from those large green doorways. That meant that when you first walked in, from the bright sunshine of a Bangalorean summer day, you needed a few minutes to make out the face of the old gentleman handing you a menu as your pupils adjusted to the changing light. There wasn’t much to choose from. Biryani, Kebabs, Mutton Kheema is what I remember. And what a spectacular biryani it was. Each serving was accompanied by an entire chicken leg, with the skin on, buried under a large pile of flavoured rice. That meant that in the process of cooking, the skin on the chicken had rendered its fat into the rice taking its status from mere legendary to epic. Thereafter, the specialty of house would be served as a condiment, the Baingal Sarla. A simple gravy of tomatoes and brinjal served cold with your biryani, but which when accompanied with each bite changed the status of the complete dish from Epic to Face-Melt. A coke washed it all down and then you just rode your bike into Ganja Park to smoke a fat spliff and maybe crashed until the early evening. Thereafter, you could head on over to Brigade Fuel and Pecos, in equal measure.
 

The tragedy of all this is, all the good memories I have of Bangalore are old memories. Old places, old friends, old times, simpler times. The truth is, and dare I say it, this city has no soul. Its devoid of personality, it lacks character, it has forgotten its roots. The aged Bangalorean who remembers the old times with a misplaced sense of nostalgia is one useless fellow. This includes me. We are a cynical bunch who prefer to rant on “Oh, how wonderful the good times were” and lament on “Oh, how things have changed” while participating, no perpetrating, the very ideals and thought processes that led to the change in the first place. Our association of “Home” with his city is weak and founded on a tenuous connect that some of our parents, who happened to build a house here and live here, have with this city. Their association of “Home” is even further removed from this city as they probably never grew up here. Seriously, how many of us can claim to be second generation Bangaloreans? Heck, are there even any third generation Bangaloreans left in the city?
 

We are a bunch of rootless people living in a rootless city holding on to a crumbling memory amidst a pile of rubbish and traffic that we are afraid to call our own. Much like that green building on Brigade Road.
 

I say tear it down and be done with it.

Image Credit: Indian Road Romeo, MS Gopal